The present invention relates to an electrical connector.
A conventional electrical connector (a connector) often includes a housing and a shield plate attached to the housing. The shield plate covers a surface of a circumferential wall of the housing. For example, Patent Reference has disclosed a conventional connector including a shield plate.    Patent Reference Japanese Patent Publication No. 2008-226477
The conventional connector disclosed in Patent Reference includes a housing having a substantially rectangular parallelepiped shape and an opening portion in a center of the housing for receiving a mating connector from an upper direction. The connector further includes a plurality of the terminals. The terminal is arranged and held in a terminal holding groove (a terminal retaining cavity) formed in each of two sidewalls extending in a longitudinal direction of the housing. The two sidewalls face to each other.
In addition, the connector includes two shielding members for covering an outer surface of the sidewalls. Each of the two shielding members includes a shield portion (a main body) for covering the outer surface of the sidewall and two held portions formed by bending both ends of the shield portion. The housing further includes an edge wall situated at an end of the sidewall. The edge wall includes a holding groove extending perpendicularly to the longitudinal direction. The held portion of the shielding member is held in the holding groove, so that the shielding member is attached to the housing.
Upon attaching the shielding member to the housing, a predetermined space is generated between the terminal and the shielding member. Accordingly, it is possible to ensure an insulating distance, in other words, the shortest distance between the terminal and the shielding member.
In the conventional connector with the shield plate attached thereto in Patent Reference, the space is generated between the shield plate and the terminal in order to ensure the proper insulating distance. As a result, a space can be generated between the outer surface of the sidewall and the shield portion.
The shield portion has an elongated plate shape. Therefore, when the shield portion has the space against the outer surface of the sidewall of the housing, a middle portion thereof can be deformed toward the outer surface of the sidewall of the housing due to a manufacturing variance, an assembling variance or an inadvertent external force and the like. The insulating distance can be affected by the deformation of the shield plate, in other words, changing of an amount of the space between the shield portion and the sidewall in a thickness direction of the shield portion, since the shield portion is fixed against the housing in a vertical direction.
Accordingly, when the shield portion becomes too close to the sidewall and then the space between the shield portion and the terminal becomes excessively small, it becomes difficult to ensure the proper insulating distance. The insulating distance is determined by the amount of the space, that is, a distance between the outer surface of the sidewall and the shield portion.
In view of the problems described above, an object of the present invention is to provide an electrical connector which enables to obtain a good shielding state by maintaining a proper distance between the outer surface of the sidewall of the housing and the shield plate so that the insulating distance between the terminal and the shield plate can be maintained properly.
Further objects and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following description of the invention.